At the beginning of the thread, Ack pointed out that the article I linked might have been satire. Maybe that's true, but right now the satire is indifferentiable from the real thing. That's the situation we're in.

I've been playing Magic Knight Rayearth for the Saturn recently. Not one of the best action adventures I've played but I enjoyed it for the most part. Getting close to the end I got curious about what people thought of it at the time of its release, looked it up and this gamespot review made me think of this thread:http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/magic-k ... 0-2534060/

It's not the worst or funniest I've seen, but it gets pretty ridiculous in parts. You can find my comment on it below the review.

lol that's something you'd hear about The 7th Saga. Ys is pretty universally appealing. Also, the reviewer completely ignored the addition of maps to the game - something that differentiates the DS version from all other ports and makes it substantially easier. I'm guessing he's not familiar with the source material.

I don't know if I agree, but that's only because the series never really appealed to me.

I do hate it however when reviews say things like "you need to be hardcore to appreciate this" when it's just a matter of they themselves not getting into it. There's a difference between a game being difficult because it's hard and a game being "difficult" because you're just not into the gameplay enough to care.

I think it would be more accurate to recommend it to genre fans (or enthusiasts if you need a stronger word). I really wish the word hardcore would get washed out of gamer vernacular entirely. Just saying it creates a barrier that halts a lot of people's curiosity.